Author's Note:
These poems are intended to mesh with the first Remembery sequence,
published as the April 1995 online-issue of Ygdrasil, as did the first
poems, these simultaneously explore the twining of past and present,
image and imagination, public and private, self and society. These
poems also explore manifestations/permutations of the sonnet as form
and as metaphor, ranging from the strictly metrical to loosely, almost
haphazardly syllabic, from close-to-perfect rhyme to consciously
distanced slant rhyme and analytical rhyme.
As do all poems, the Remembery sequences originate in the mind and
memory of the poet; this is not to suggest, however, that the poems
are the poet, nor that any of the memories herein contained have not
been subjected to various changes--one hopes, to improve them as poetry
while distancing them as history or autobiography. Still, the emotional
and psychological journey suggested here has resulted in the poet--in
this person, at this point in a particular life.
If any aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters, one-time neighbors,
long-lost school-chums, or other participant and/or peripheral
characters in the ongoing odyssey of the poet's life recognize
themselves and take umbrage at my distortion of strict fact, my
apologies; this poetry is meant to heal and strengthen, not to hurt.
But along the way to health, there may be sometimes a necessary pain.
Michael R. Collings

REMEMBERY IIbyMichael R. CollingsSightings over Vistas to RememberySightings: Seagulls
Yesterday I heard a distant seagull
Cry and, glancing skyward, saw dream-white
Touched with charcoal-ash arc above [ ..., ] small,
Deft sounds of feathers ruffled air. Too late
I focused--by then it had diminished
To a fluted cry, brief echo against
Unbroken blue. [ ... ] Too late, it flashed
Once more, so far removed it seemed to test
Remembery--a flash, a moment's grace
Urging plaintively beyond a linen
World. [ ...and gone..... ] It carried into time, space,
Eternity a single fading glint
That I shall now encase in brittle glass,
Immure in beds of browning, bitter moss.
Sightings: Pelicans
From shore, the rock hunched white and sodden, drowned
By whorls of spray, softened to mottled greys--
After-sunset-pearls. Something moved. Down
They dropped, black kernels knotting darkness, day's
Tears--dark-on-white--plashing against bone-rock,
Skull-rock craning up, around, enticing
Waves. They dropped, spiraled, settled on the back
Of that single white-washed promontory
Half-a-hundred yards beyond dull cliffs. One,
Then two, then four--they singly stroked the wind
To find each place of settlement--alone,
Disparate on the rock's rutched arc, they dined
On half-digested fish. This year, four eggs,Bone-china-thin, lay shattered in stick nests.
Sightings: Swallows
I watched them whirl--an indeterminate rout--
Beyond the lintel, flared feathers flashing
Silver-and-grey, seeming-black beneath clouds
Piled up offshore before invading
The Coastal Range. I watched them swirl and hurl
Themselves on invisible currents--twist,
Arc, pivot, rise, and fall in immeasur-
Able rhythms that avoided close-massed
Bodies of fellows diving for similar blobs
Of mud to build quaint nests. I watched them hook
Against rough stucco, press minute daubs
Into their growing shells, then wing back
Down--their numbers swallowed half the sky.
I did not watch this single swallow die.
AMNESIA
Our Birth is not a Sleep or a Forgetting,
As Wordsworth said, but more...and less--not Sleep
But deep unConsciousness preluding
Dreams and Visions in the darkened Deep
We now transgress. Nor Forgetting (which
Implies Remembery in this mortal
State) but strict Amnesia--'not-Remembery'--
Extended through long, dark, and lonely years;
Amnesiac unConsciousness more clearly
Satisfies parameters of this earthly
Life--more so than mere sleep or merely
Forgetting. We do not know who, or why,
Or how, or when we became of Earth--
Remembery begins its painful Birth.
In the Old House on the Farm
I've never seen the place where I was born,
Do not remember ever seeing it,
Though vague images of woodwork, brick, and stone
Persist. A Maternity Home, she called
It on the few times that I asked. She wouldn't
Volunteer. So I have appropriated
A new birthplace: logs hand-hewn, chipped gray grout,
Age-softened splinters bearding warped door jambs.
Inside: smells of cobwebs mingled with untouched
Dust and threat of spiders--two cast-off wicker
Funeral-baskets--an old crank telephone
That sputtered random sparks--a Maytag washer
Wringer-less, chipped and gray--a memory-maze
Still echoing my mother's new-born cries.
From the Porch
we watched, she says, school children
trudge rough-graveled roads (not paved, not yet--
our subdivision still too new), clutching
books and bags and Howdy-Doody lunch-kits--
waving as they passed, she and I, who would
remain at home until raw afternoon
returned empty kits, and books, and children wild
for play. Each morning we watched wave on
wave of children pass, she says, smiled and waved
until their last departing feet transgressed
the corner lawn and disappeared. We rose,
she says, and dusted off the concrete dust
and went inside, where she deferred her daily chores
until she'd dressed me for the day in male attire.
Stringing Buttons
Stringing buttons--hunched on the worn pine floor,
Its planks velvet smooth from half-century
Of hands scrubbing, polishing--musty air
Warm with subtle gossip, whispered words we
Youngsters ignored.... We strung buttons on hanks
Of time-greyed cotton-thread and squabbled for
Favorites: foil-backed glass; glossy jet, ink-
Black-deep; mock turquoise; hand-cut bone, smooth, clear--
While hour on hour grandmothers stitched staid quilts,
Wove intricate lines with white cotton strands
Through patterns pieced from scraps--old aprons, shirts
Sunday dresses faded and worn breath-thin;
Our cotton threads coiled in the button box--
We never cared that none had end-thread knots.
Scars
Fascinated and amazed, we watched white puffs
Of popcorn spring from husk-dried yellow kernels
Skittering in oil at the bottom of
Grandma's popper--watched with lust almost carnal,
Hot-intense, for savory soft flesh
Exploding its sparse hardness. With a quick laugh
I leaned further forward--closer--felt a flash
Of flame--there, gone--and saw a yellow-edged, rough
Leaf lying dead on my wrist. I plucked at it....
Even yet, the forty-year-old pain's enough
To burst Remembery and overwhelm; but
Now the wrinkled scar beneath my stiff-white cuff
Fades under crosshatched marks from intervening
Years...scars over scars...measurements of meaning.
Elegy
Three months of my sixth summer sleep below
Sage stones that clatter slopes from Chimney Rock,
Sweep into shallow fields where, summer-slow,
Wheat carpet-spears await fall's winnow-rake
Three months of my sixth summer lie with her.
Dead, she laughs no more, nor weeps, nor sets
Aside the ripest tart-sweet berries in their
Stone crocks, or ice-chilled cream, or stream-crisp cress.
Three months of my sixth summer died when she,
Too, slept. I missed her. Tears that threatened storms
Have dried, aches smoothed. And only years have eased
The loss--as spring still thaws, or summer warms.
Three months of my sixth summer sagely rest--
An apple's brown-bossed core returns to dust.
Cutting the Tree
Dad cut the fir and bound it, that late October,
Limb-tight and stiff against the northern wall
Where strait Montana sunlight could not seer
Thin needles, crust bright greens to dust-brown hulls--
Then set it in a dinted, rusted pail,
With moistened sand to feed its sap, and left
It there. The first snowfall threatened, fell--
Shrouded limbs and trunk and tin--and cleft
Green with ever-shrouding white. On Christmas
Eve, he brought the tree inside and snipped
Hemp-twine. We breathed our disappointment as
The fir stood, limb-tight and stiff, narrow-topped;
But--oh! The wonder that next Christmas morn--
Exquisite breadth of branches, light adorned--
After Spring RainsBillings, Montana--1958
Malibu, California--1998
Back then...when roadbeds crested concrete
Banks--and flood-tides asphalt-black invaded
Clipped, pruned lawns--and wooden rowboats swept
Inundated four-way stops to rest embedded
Against tall five-foot stoops--and sluicing mud
Remained behind to tantalize young steps
As we slipped back two for every yard we made--
Back then...cascading rains meant school would stop,
Grass gleam unmowed, weeds tower proud, unpulled--
And nowhere in Remembery reside
Black-bitter images of faces paled
At damp-drowned cellars, foundation walls awade
With weeping cracks--at threatened dissolution
As sudden as a cliff-slide's deathward motion.
Bluebottle Flies
Sentinel in Grandma's Attic
With grey and heavy hmmmmms, a fly again
attacks the window's dust-baked pane; its wings,
two gyrous blades, distress stale air to feign
a rush of breath. "Tik-thump!" Glossy weight
bows rippled glass, and ancient apple trees
abrading splintered sills curve shadows, cut
thin fracture lines distorting buds and leaves
to knit-purl death. I slip the ancient lock
to jamb, tiptoe backward down dust-graven
stairs. That grey-toned hmmmm becomes a sudden
pain-pent breath. I wait. Unslip the lock. Shiver
past the door. The fly--a scrawl of dust in
Dust. Along the ledge, bluebottles crust--
Black filings flung to time's magnetic lust.
Peach Jam
That day our peaches ripened all at once,
Sheening gold in woven bushel baskets;
"An ox-in-the-mire Sabbath," Dad announced
And we pitched in with juvenile racket,
Stuffing quarter slices into wide-mouth
Mason jars because whole halves seemed too vast
To fit; pouring syrup--boiling, frothy
Gold; giving rings a sturdy final twist;
Then mashing bruised peach tags and broken bits
Into the work-worn grinder Mom brought out
Each summer just for jellying; licking
Fingers stained peach-gold, unspeakably sweet....
We passed on church that day--a rarity--
And yet the hours seem draped in purity.
From the Porch
she watches silently
as I wobble down our block--ten houses
per side, each house replete with its ante
of DNA reserved for future decades
to proliferate--she watches, I wobble
side to side, slowly, far too slowly for
a twelve-year-old returning from his first
(and though she doesn't know it yet, his last)
stint as catcher for the Little League. She
watches, arms folded, face turned slightly,
as she has watched (will watch) in photographs--
detached, unfocused, there but not a part;
she watches but does not see red blood
crusted on my face, harsh pain-filled eyes
1,000,000
Counting to a million, stomach-sprawled, he
scritched number after number on his roll
Of butcher paper spread across our floor.
Night by night, the paper's essence increased
by hundreds...thousands.
Smiling patiently,
Indulgently, she glances down at him, arms
knotted at her breast. His eraser mars
a misplaced number--scowling at the beast
he scritches on and on.
Kitchen-bound, we
three scrub ragged rings from plates, wash pans, drop
milk-glazed glasses into hot water, prod
wrinkled fingers across smooth flatware, grease-
encrusted. We work.
He scritches numbers.
We work, clean up, endure silent hours to slumber.
SparkleSparkle-sparkle--gutter-light flashes once, twice.
I crouch above a thick inch-layer of dirt
raw from spring thaws, focus two excited eyes
on glistening stones, calculating their worth--
sparkle-sparkle-sparkle--not in coin or cash
but in sheer loveliness as slick root-beer glints
wink at me, beg a home. I pick them up, crush
them in my palm, quite overcome by their glanc-
ing sparkle-sparkle-sparkle--and rush to soothe
angular facets with soft cloths and polish.
The parents see, watch, take the bracelet with smooth,
practiced grasp--Don't waste precious time so foolish-ly--and let me know, down through the depths of soul,
this is not a bauble boys should wish to own.
Sleeping Out
Beneath box-elders that by day rose striped
And mottled under thick umbrella-crowns...,
That wove stark summer's heat through leaf and twig
And dropped cool shadow to the waiting ground;
By night...by night rhapsodic melodies
Of all imagined trysting-songs breathed warmth
And whispered from the trees like memories
Not wholly understood that triggered mirth
And subtle fear as I, cocoon-tight wrapped
Against pre-dawn dew, prayed for solemn sleep
To wrest me into dreams of iced, sweet grapes
That burst their bitter skins against my thirst....
Vagrant winds caught ripe dandelion heads,
Dispersed in random darkness lonely seeds.
Because Your Sister
shows no love for notes,
the organ will be yours when you grow up.
By right it goes--always has--to the old-
est daughter; but in your case you may step
into her place because you love music,"
she said, and did she know the forty-year-
long breach she would create and did she reck-
on in the damage done to him when she
equated him with her, son's love with
daughter's heritage, let him know without
words how valueless his soul, how beneath
contempt she held his heart and did she doubt
an instant that she spoke but simple truth,
gave him a gift...destroyed him at the root
Magdalene

Two walking baths. Two weeping motions;
Portable and compendious Oceans...."
--Richard Crashaw
Home breathed silence. Kitchen walls strained to hold
stale breath. I burst in. I could barely keep
my heart controlled. I heard my mother weep
a stifled, roiling groan that shattered cold
across my spine. Her grating weeping tolled
Death--father, perhaps, or husband--some pain deep
as darkness, cutting dark. But how could she weep--
weep for Dag Hammarskjld?* Dag Hammarskjld,
for pity sake! This woman who neither spoke
of politics nor Congan tyranny,
nor drew a piteous, quavering breath
for any's loss, nor trembled in a cloak
of tears before or after that long day--
not even as she stood before my father's death.
[*Dag Hammarskjld: Swedish diplomat and Secretary-General
of the United Nations, killed in a 1961 airplane crash while
on a peace-keeping mission to the Congo.]
To Eat a Peach
O'Halloran--fat, red-neck wrinkled like
a gross of Montana winter scarves--reeks
his laughter, stands, and punches at his class
with an unlit cigar. Three o'clock recess.
Joey Kattenhorn (hawk-thin at thirteen)
disappears into the john, blocks the door
with one shoulder, changes jeans for red gym trunks--
first to imitate brash high-school football hunks
who jeer through the diamond-paned cyclone fence.
He dares to change and play baseball in shorts,
sharp ridges of his stomach bared and tan.
I escape O'Halloran--escape and run...
Maybe I can sneak into the John before
Joey, watch him strip, wish that I could dare.
It
I do not know its cause, its time or place,
Beyond a faint apprehension in old
Photographs and slides. I see in her face--
Half-turned away from us--something lost, cold,
Severed from her own throbbing flesh. It grows
From photograph to photograph, hardens,
Congeals lines of criticism, flows
Unspoken through tight lips. Iris gardens
Reflect its presence...absence...distance. She
Stares outward and beyond, locked in herself,
Locked out beyond herself, enclosed, no key
Remaining that can call her back. The shelf
On which she stores her core lies dead and dark;
It has consumed her--harsh and cold and stark.
First JobMolestation rings harshly in Remembery--
frightens even now, rusty and obscured;
back then, the word did not yet ring with pain.
and no, it was not quite ... but something close.
I remember new white jeans, tight, stiffer
than seemed comfortable--my sleek red bike
pumping toward a row of shops--storeroom shelves
where I stood stacking boxes of new shoes.
He showed it. I did not know what it was.
He called it a dance-belt, explained its use.
"Try it on." I glanced toward a screened-in
alcove behind the silent racks of shoes.
I might have taken it if some hand unseen,
had not rung the hidden entry-bell.
* * * * *
When he returned, I was hard at work
stacking boxes--empty, full, I did not care,
the job was mine. Later, he came back.
He did not try again. Instead, he talked
of nervousness, tense muscles ... relaxation.
He rolled the small machine across my shoulders,
down my sides, along child-thin ribs, murmured
as he worked. He touched, and smiled a secret smile.
The hidden bell rang again. He left. I
stacked boxes, numb and shaking, until he closed.
"It won't work out," he said, stripping a handful
of dollars from his wallet. "It just won't work."
White pants. Bicycle awkward against thin thighs.
I struggled home. I never spoke the ugly word.
Because the Father
was not home the task
fell to her that hot July afternoon
with triple-digit temperatures to blast
heat-ebbs and -flows She stepped outside to find
him grubbing in rank weed-beds by the fence
hands flickering in and out among stems
segregating weed from soil with danc-
ing fingertips He stood She stared at him
allowed her eyes to drop His followed hers
She did not see hot flame-beneath-tan spot
his shoulders neck and cheek but mother-sure
spoke on You have no business wearing shorts-
that-short-that-thin-transparent when you sweat
The heat within surpassed the sun's own heat
sure
burnJust Like Beethoven
, they said (at least all
but one were right to that degree--the one
referred to 'Mozart,' but I will give full
credit for coming close)--as if to shame
mute agonies for deafness--as if mere
comparison of me to Beethoven
would suffice to...somehow...help recover
equilibrium and pride in playing
an instrument that I will never hear
completely--dead upper ranks of flutes,
diapasons, trumpets--as if to share
my skill with his and find the vaster truth
that while we may divide deafness and loss,
his talent was of gold--but mine, slick gloss.
After Diagnosis
and I remember her at eighty-five,
wiry, white-haired (...no surprise, since she
had turned from starling-black to startled white
before she had seen twenty-four...)--that day,
though, all thoughts of dark-haired, smooth-eyed youth
had long since died into the oblivion
of white-, and vague-, and gentle-slide to death
(...still nine bland years away...)--but that day--then--
she huddled close to her yellowed page, one hand,
age-spotted, vaguely trembling over one
smudged lens, obscuring froth-white eye. She strained
to cipher hieroglyphic scrawls. She moaned
one time, bewailing cataracts and years.
At fifty, I now understand her fears.
Gardening Taken as an Act Of Compassionate Service
Seventy-five--but more by several
Decades now of lassitude, of wasted
Energy dispersed in weaving webs well
Girded against strains by iron-fisted
Time--seventy-five, she holds tenacious
Grasp on her small plot, her one-fifth acre,
Overlooking in-laws, grandchildren gracious
Enough to work, root out weeds from ochre
Soil--seventy-five, she haunts strong hands
That tidy edges, hawks at prey on knees
Crusted with mud, her words descend, turn, wind
Silk-strong filaments intended to freeze
Forever matriarchal bonds intact--
Each blade of grass meticulous and correct.
Lying Hand-Crossed in Her Satin Box
Lying hand-crossed in her satin box
She falls mock-peacefully asleep at last.
Her hair, pincurled and stiffly white (bleached phlox--
Crystal crushed in her winter-storms least blast),
Glows albino in our silent, muted glare.
Her cheeks lie sunken, dark-dry-wrinkled clefts,
Dead earth twisted at an earthquakes core--
Her fingers, useless dust for Time to sift.
She lays in wait for Eternity. And we
Dry tears, sigh fears, retrain long-pented joy
To solemn reminiscences until
Guilt-haggard, we bury her in the lee
Of a box-elder bole and--suddenly, shyly coy--
Separate, to follow out her will.
My Eyes Stayed Closed
An Essay on the Fine Art of Poetry Sublimating Life
I woke this morning several times--each time
a surfacing from tether-dreams to taut
realities. My eyes stayed closed--my soul
engrossed in silence, vividness, and light.
The first time, I heard silence--no jitterings,
no ringing singing clattering--just silent dreams
beyond the reach of random sound. My eyesstayed closed--I chose the dream again.
The second time, I saw colors--clear forms,
smooth shapes, sounds and sights combined
to cradle me in reassurances.
My eyes stayed closed--embracing dreams.
I face the world half-deafened, -blinded, -aged--
and wish myself again into Remembery.
Michael R. Collings

A New Age: The Centipede Network Of
Artists, Poets, & Writers
An Informational Journey Into A Creative Echonet [9310]
(C) CopyRight "I Write, Therefore, I Develop" By Paul
Lauda

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